In Reply.—We certainly appreciate Dr Coyle's concern over the possibility of child abuse as a factor in the second case presented in our paper. In the interest of space, we did not present all of the details of the history in that case. In fact, there had been an ongoing altercation between this child's parent and a neighbor for the weeks preceding the injury. The mother was holding the child when she answered a knock at the door one day and the neighbor was waiting with a pail of lye, which she immediately threw on the mother. Unfortunately, the child was in the mother's arms at the time. Both the mother and the child, in fact, required hospitalization for these alkali burns. The social situation was investigated by the Social Services Department at our hospital and no evidence suggestive of "inflicted trauma" was found by the pediatricians after extensive